If I had known about these women coming up, maybe I would’ve aspired to be a rocket scientist.
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The film, directed by Theodore Melfi, is due out in early 2017.
“I just see them as heroes”, said Monae. Henson and her co-stars ― Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe ― hadn’t seen any footage yet, leaving them floored at the fruits of a project with great personal significance.
Spencer, who tartly noted that no women were mentioned as being part of NASA in “Apollo 13”, portrays Dorothy Vaughn, a computer repairperson who trained herself to program FORTRAN, and later trained all the black and white women at NASA. But nowadays, this is all that kids of color feel like they have: sports, rap, acting. We did get a glimpse at some stirring material: Mary Jackson (Monae) defiantly asks a judge to allow her to take classes necessary for her to become an engineer.
“All I had was dreams and hope, and the reason why this is so overwhelming is because when you come from a place when you have no dreams, no hope, and all you see is that people that look like you don’t belong, or they have no place in society”, Henson said, trailing off as tears again stung her eyes. Spencer’s voice grew shaky.
“People come up to me and say, oh Oscars, you know everybody wants to put on the pressure”, she said, “What I’m most concerned about was would Katherine be proud”. The two are vastly different women, but according to Henson, she had a little trouble switching between the two. Let me clear that up. She portrays a math savant, Katherine Johnson, who just turned 98, and who past year was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. All that other stuff I didn’t care about. It shouldn’t matter what god you celebrate, what color your skin is, who you go to sleep with at night, who you say “I do” to – this movie represents what we should be thinking. “How do we make this place better?” With a full band and a small choir, he performed a few of the original songs he wrote for the soundtrack and managed to weave in references to the film, even dedicating one tune to the newly-anointed Fox chief, Stacey Snider.
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Hidden Figures, also starring Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae, hits theaters January 13.
